And the town is frozen solid in a vice, <br />Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass. <br />Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice, <br />the painted sleighs and I, together, pass. <br />And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows <br />there’s a pale green dome there that glows, <br />dim in the sun-shrouded dust. <br />The field of heroes lingers in my thought, <br />Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground. <br />The frozen poplars, like glasses for a toast, <br />clash now, more noisily, overhead. <br />As though it was our wedding, and the crowd <br />were drinking to our health and happiness. <br />But Fear and the Muse take turns to guard <br />the room where the exiled poet is banished, <br />and the night, marching at full pace, <br />of the coming dawn, has no knowledge.<br /><br />Anna Akhmatova<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-osip-mandelstam/
